The present invention is generally related to improved robotic and/or measurement devices, systems, and methods. An exemplary embodiment provides a robotic surgical system which makes use of a combination of telemanipulation of a robotic tool together with stereoscopic image processing to input and designate discrete three-dimensional (3-D) point locations along the tissue (or other structure), continuous 3-D contours, and other 3-D structural information so as to obtain length measurements, area measurements, volume measurements, or the like.
Minimally-invasive surgical techniques are aimed at reducing the amount of extraneous tissue that is damaged during diagnostic or surgical procedures, thereby reducing patient recovery time, discomfort, and collateral tissue damage. As a consequence, the average length of a hospital stay for standard surgery may be shortened significantly using minimally-invasive surgical techniques. Also, patient recovery times, patient discomfort, surgical side effects, and time away from work may also be reduced with minimally-invasive surgery.
Endoscopy is a well known form of minimally-invasive surgery, and a common form of endoscopy is laparoscopy, which is minimally-invasive inspection and surgery inside the abdominal cavity. In standard laparoscopic surgery, a patient's abdomen is insufflated with gas and cannula sleeves are passed through small (approximately ½ inch or less) incisions to provide entry ports for laparoscopic instruments.
Laparoscopic surgical instruments generally include a laparoscope or an endoscope (for viewing the surgical field), and working tools. The working tools are similar to those used in conventional open surgery, except that the working end or end effector of each tool is separated from its handle by an elongate shaft. The end effector or working part of the surgical instrument can manipulate or treat tissue, and may (for example) include clamps, graspers, scissors, staplers, image capture lenses, or needle holders.
To perform surgical procedures, the surgeon passes the working tools or instruments through cannula sleeves to an internal surgical site and manipulates the tools or instruments from outside the abdomen. The surgeon views the procedure by means of a monitor that displays an image of the surgical site taken from the laparoscope. Similar endoscopic techniques are employed in, e.g., arthroscopy, retroperitoneoscopy, pelviscopy, nephroscopy, cystoscopy, cisternoscopy, sinoscopy, hysteroscopy, urethroscopy, and the like.
Minimally-invasive telesurgical robotic systems are being developed to increase a surgeon's dexterity when working within an internal surgical site, and optionally to allow a surgeon to operate on a patient from a remote location. In a telesurgery system, the surgeon is often provided with an image of the surgical site at a control console. While viewing a 3-D image of the surgical site on a suitable viewer or display, the surgeon performs the surgical procedures on the patient by manipulating master input or control devices of the control console. Each of the master input devices controls the motion of a servomechanically operated surgical instrument. During the surgical procedure, the telesurgical system can provide mechanical actuation and control of a variety of surgical instruments or tools having end effectors that perform various functions for the surgeon, e.g., holding or driving a needle, grasping a blood vessel, dissecting tissue, or the like, in response to manipulation of the master input devices.
While the new telesurgical robotic systems have tremendous promise for extending the capabilities of surgeons to perform therapies with less trauma to the patient, as with many successes, still further improvements would be desirable. For example, known robotic systems often rely on joint position information from sensors associated with each of the joints of the robotic linkage to calculate end effector movement demands, locations, and the like. While such joint-based information provides sufficiently accurate relative movements of the end effector for most telesurgical purposes, the absolute location of the surgical tool determined using this joint-based data may not be precise enough for all purposes. In particular, there are times when it would be advantageous to acquire tissue measurement information using the robotic surgical system, and some improvement over the accuracy provided by the joint-based data may be beneficial for such measurements.
In light of the above, it would be desirable to provide improved robotic and/or measurement systems for surgery and other applications. It would be particularly advantageous if these improvements allowed the physician to both interact with and measure tissues, ideally with the measurements comprising three dimensional measurements with accuracies beyond those easily provided using joint-based data alone.